Thread: Here is Jill's beginning fruits of JDSU research, some of which is not news; just stuff I found, so we can further discuss kinghood.
First, here's an article from Canada:
ottawacitizen.com
Despite outperforming all other locally based companies since going public three years ago, JDS Fitel maintains a remarkably low profile in Ottawa. That's largely in keeping with the style of Jozef Straus, JDS Fitel's brilliant and eccentric chief executive, who prefers to stay out of the public eye as much as possible.
Now that the Nepean maker of fibre optic components is merging with Uniphase Corp., the California-based company headed by Kevin Kalkhoven, JDS will no longer be hiding its light under a bushel.
Called gutsy, visionary, and even "the Tazmanian devil of the photonics industry" by analysts, Mr. Kalkhoven is determined to bring the newly renamed JDS Uniphase to the forefront of what he sees as a multi-billion dollar revolution in the technology industry.
His greatest challenge in reaching his goal, however, is not overcoming aggressive competitors. Instead, he says, JDS Uniphase must convince telecommunications giants such as Northern Telecom Ltd. and Lucent Technologies Inc. to adopt a new and radically different approach to delivering communications services to their clients.
He admits his strategy could be seen by some as a "big bet," but one that, if successful, could turn JDS Uniphase into "the first billion-dollar company (in sales) in our business."
Mr. Kalkhoven, who is based in Uniphase's San Jose headquarters, was in Ottawa earlier this month on one of his regular visits to JDS Fitel. Since the two companies announced their $6.1 billion "merger of equals" on Jan. 28, Uniphase's chief executive has travelled to the capital region every two weeks. He flies via a leased, Israeli-made corporate jet that seats eight and has taken him across North America and even to Europe.
On this particular visit, Mr. Kalkhoven strides toward visitors waiting at the airport, one arm extended and the other holding a cell phone to his ear. It's a fitting introduction to a corporate chief who oversees a company with $175 million in sales and 1,100 employees in both hemispheres.
Today, Mr. Kalkhoven cuts short his stay in Ottawa to travel to Bloomfield, Connecticut, home to the first in a string of companies acquired over the years by Uniphase. After a meeting of a few hours with his Connecticut executives, he will return to Ottawa to drop off two JDS Fitel employees who accompanied him before flying home to California.
All the travelling is part of a demanding schedule; often, he says, he packs a sleeping bag on the corporate jet and grabs a few hours rest on a pull-out seat.
Uniphase was started in a garage in 1979 to make lasers used in supermarket scanners. It turned its first profit the next year and, according to chief technology officer Fred Leonberger, has remained profitable ever since.
Mr. Kalkhoven joined the company in 1992 after a career that involved fixing up struggling Silicon Valley businesses, marketing software products, and working as a Cobol programmer at IBM Corp.
Today, Uniphase has completely re-invented itself as the leading, third-party supplier of active fibre-optic components to communications giants such as Lucent, Nortel and Alcatel. Uniphase's gear include the lasers and computer chips that help fibre-optic networks carry greater amounts of data.
In comparison, JDS Fitel is the leading, third-party supplier of passive components, such as filters, which manipulate the light carrying the data.
Through their merger, which was applauded by analysts, JDS Fitel and Uniphase plan to provide a one-stop source of equipment parts for telecom and datacom networks, at a time when companies like Nortel, racing to build fibre-optic systems, are demanding faster delivery of fewer product pieces in order to cut costs and save time.
Since going public in 1993, Uniphase has boosted revenues by more than 360 per cent. In the same period, its market capitalization has exploded in value from nearly $33 million U.S. to nearly $4.1 billion. Uniphase's stock now trades around $102 U.S. on the Nasdaq.
Analysts and colleagues credit Mr. Kalkhoven with much of Uniphase's remarkable success.
"He's a whirlwind," says Seth Spalding, an analyst in broadband communications at San Francisco-based C.E. Unterberg Towbin. "Kevin has guided Uniphase ... into a force in the telecommunications industry. He's a couple of years ahead of the market, and it was his vision that led to (Uniphase's) transformation."
Rick Crandall is the founder of ComShare Corp., an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based software company. He hired Mr. Kalkhoven in the early 1970s to lead the company's sales division.
"It's rare to find someone with true marketing skills," he says of the man with whom he worked for 15 years. "He focuses on a strategy and doesn't get distracted."
William Magill, a senior analyst with NationsBanc Montgomery Securities, also in San Francisco, says one of Mr. Kalkhoven's key strengths is his primarily business background.
"Kevin is a businessman more than a technologist, which is increasingly important in this competitive space of optical communications.
"This is a young market area," he says of the global fibre-optics industry, valued at roughly $3 billion U.S. this year and expected to be worth $6.8 billion in five years. "The winners in this market will increasingly be determined by their business strategy as much as their technical superiority."
Added Mr. Magill: "He's been quite successful identifying market opportunities that may reside 12 to 18 months in the future, and in pursuing companies with products that fit those opportunities."
Mr. Kalkhoven is also a "gutsy guy," Mr. Magill added, and has "no shortage of confidence."
A love of risk-taking and adventure is certainly evident in the hobbies the 54-year-old Australian native has adopted. With 20 years' flying experience, he pilots his eight-seater Cessna to the Caribbean and even across the Atlantic.
He took up scuba diving ten years. "I was really nervous of water," he says, "and I decided the only way to solve the problem was to go scuba diving."
He now dives in the Caribbean, the Pacific and off the coast of Australia.
He has also taken up shark feeding.
"That's fun," he says. "You go down and you have these long rods with fish on the end and you feed sharks.
"Life is an adventure," he added. "If you're going to achieve anything, you've go to push limits."
His love of risk-taking is tempered when it comes to business, though.
"Everyone is a risk-taker in this business, but all risk is calculated. It goes back to a combination of experience and intuition. I've been in business long enough to know what's right and what's not."
His intuition and confidence -- both in himself and in the scientists and executives with whom he regulary consults -- have led to several savvy business acquisitions.
In 1995, Uniphase made its first purchase, acquiring Bloomfield, Connecticut-based United Technologies Photonics. Founded by Fred Leonberger, the company made industrial lasers for semiconductor equipment. Many people, Mr. Kalkhoven says, thought Uniphase was taking a gamble in buying a "dying technology."
"We had $11 million in the bank and we spent $8 million buying this little operation, and the other $3 million in building their manufacturing facility. "If the acquisition had failed, we would have gone bankrupt."
Fortunately, "we had a scientist on our board who believed that (the technology) was going to be okay. And we believed him," he recalled.
Mr. Crandall says Mr. Kalkhoven often relies on the experts around him for guidance.
"The kinds of people he's bringing in are very highly educated and extremely skilled. They're eagles, and he creates an environment that they like."
UTP has since grown from about 50 employees to 300, and has sales of about $100 million. It now makes wafers used to guide optical signals.
In March, 1997, Mr. Kalkhoven made what analysts consider one of his most insightful and daring moves. For $45 million U.S., Uniphase bought a laser equipment division in Zurich, Switzerland that IBM Corp. no longer wanted. The division makes pump-laser chip technology, used to boost optical signals carrying data across great distances. Pump laser chips, no bigger than a grain of salt, are now "one of the most sought after products in the telecommunications industry," because they're key to making fibre optic communications work, says C.E. Unterberg Towbin analyst Seth Spalding.
Uniphase now makes "tens of thousands" of pump lasers each month, Mr. Leonberger says.
According to NationsBanc's Mr. Magill, Uniphase has spent $271 million on acquisitions since 1995.
"A small company can't invest enough money in research and development to cover the spectrum (of opportunities)," Mr. Kalkhoven says in explaining why Uniphase has chosen to grow through acquiring, rather than developing, technology.
This, he says, is his reason for merging with JDS Fitel.
"For (JDS Fitel and Uniphase) to succeed, we have to do some very big things together in the future," he says.
"Either company could have stayed on its own and not taken the risk of merging and been successful entities. But that would have meant we'd each spend a lot of R&D money, with us going into (JDS Fitel's) market space, and they going into ours.
"It's much better to take that R&D money, put the companies together, and spend that R&D money doing things faster than anybody else."
The combined JDS Uniphase will have 3,600 employees and annual sales of about $600 million.
Mr. Kalkhoven will be chief executive of JDS Uniphase, while JDS Fitel co-founder Jozef Straus will take on the role of president and chief operating officer.
Mr. Kalkhoven says he expects no problems in jointly running the new company with Mr. Straus.
"The company has to operate on two levels. At one level there is a lot of day-to-day activity, which Jozef is better than anybody else I know at. The other level is looking five, ten years down the road to see where we have to position the company. That's what I...will do."
Looking forward, Mr. Kalkhoven says "one of the biggest problems I see inside (JDS Uniphase) for the future is we're going to have to re-invent ourselves.
"We're going from a computer-centric world to a bandwidth-centric world. The next big revolution in technology is not going to be more powerful computers. It's going to be bandwidth, linking all computers together. If you believe that, then you recognize the only way of doing that is (through) fiber optics."
"Our belief is very simple. Bandwidth rules and we want to supply the technology for bandwidth."
The in achieving this goal comes not from competitors such as E-Tek Dynamics Inc., but from Uniphase's own customers.
"In the 60s and 70s, all the computer companies were vertically integrated. They made everything, the boxes, software, memory, everything. By the time the 90s came, they had moved to being horizontal, and they bought all their technology from merchant suppliers.
"Our biggest competition will be to provide an easy transition path for the telecommunications companies to do the same thing. They shouldn't have to build their own huge fabs, or do all the R&D. They should be concentrating on (building) their systems and their software and their customer service, and allow us to concentrate on giving them the best technology."
He says he is "seeing some signs" that the vendors are adopting this approach. Indeed, Nortel recently announced it may outsource some of its manufacturing.
Analysts and colleagues, most of whom say they're hard pressed to identify any mistakes or weaknesses on the part of Mr. Kalkhoven, believe he can succeed in his latest venture.
"He's always been good to his word in terms of delivering on what he says," says C.E. Unterberg Towbin analyst Seth Spalding.
Kevin Slocum, managing director of Stamford, Connecticut-based SoundView Technology Group, agrees.
"People have faith in his judgment. He's driven, and he can get people to do what they need to do to succeed." |
